Hobby Articles

When summertime comes around, a lot of people feel like going on holiday, and for many of those, it means hitting the beach. For me, normally, holiday means going back home to Quebec, and while one of the main attractions of this destination is seeing everyone and everything I miss, another one is to go on a hockey card spending spree. Living in England, when its time to buy cards; singles or boxes, I have to turn to the Internet as there are no shops on this side of the pond to fuel my addiction.

Some might not know what goes into super collecting of a certain player. Super collecting is where you try to collect every different card of a player made. For instance, there can be 50 cards of a certain player or there can be 10,000 different cards of a player, it really just depends on who it is.

For my main player collection of Justin Verlander there are currently 1,774 different cards made, and I have 134 of them. That’s a little more than 7.5 percent of all of the cards made of his. However, there is a certain More >

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I have wondered for months why collectors silently put up with the extremely high prices modern card products have. After all, it is one big lottery. It’s nice to have one or two super high-end products every year; something for us mortals to window shop at and for the more wealthy citizens to buy. But this year’s situation has stepped up a notch. We don’t only have The Cup and ITG Ultimate; we have Superlative, OPC Premier, Black, Masterpieces, and what not.

Take your pick, any high-end or mid-end product, and it’s all one cheap gigantic lottery. You have More >

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As a hockey fan and collector, every year I sort of dread the summer. Don’t get me wrong, I do not mind the hot weather, but I miss my daily fix of NHL highlights and the regular release of new products. During the regular season, so many interesting boxes come out that it’s unreal: the standard Upper Deck, Artifacts, SPx, SPA, Ice, Superlative, Heroes and Prospect and the list goes on. In the summer months, there is a clear lack of releases.

Of course, by now we all have all heard that as well as OPC Premier and NHL More >

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There are two camps within hockey collectors: Those who send cards for grading, and those who don’t. The majority is the latter, and the majority often consider the first group as somewhat picky, peculiar nerds. This article won’t be about the art of grading, but the art of judging condition of a card based on grades.

I have found that collector’s ways of dealing with this matter is sloppy and ignorant to say the least. Since I don’t want to draw the conclusion everyone is trying to make their cards better (which equals more value) it most likely comes More >

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Card collectors: smart traders or blind idiots? This is the question I pose. Before everyone starts hurling insults my way, read, then judge for yourself.

I, like many of you, like to inform myself on the ups and downs in the card collecting market. We use pricing guides like Tuff Stuff or Beckett to see who is hot and who’s not, so to speak. Who is going to be the next Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Mickey Mantle or Joe Montana? It seems we’re willing to spend tons of money on boxes of cards in hope of that one pull we all More >